What is ESPD and How it is Beneficial? Other Services

The full form of ESPD is: European Single Procurement Document

ESPD is a self declaration submitted by the bidders interested in supplying to buyers in European Union region. Before the implementation of ESPD, all the suppliers bidding for EU contracts/tenders were supposed to submit various documents, providing proof that they are eligible to participate in the procurement process. These documents were, generally related with tax compliance, conviction etc. With ESPD now the bidder have to submit a single declaration about various aspects ONLY once. Only the winning bidder needs to submit the actual documents to the purchaser. Implementation of ESPD has brought tremendous convenience and efficiency not only to the suppliers but all to the buyers in EU zone.

The concept of European Single Procurement Document (ESPD) was first introduced through EU regulation 2016/7 of 5 January 2016, which also established the standard form for ESPD.

In the initial phase, the ESPD services was provided by the European Commission, but from 2 May 2019 the services from EU side was switched off and was maintained by the national government at country level. The objective to decentralize the ESPD service was to have better control and integration with national procurement system. Use of electronic ESPD enables data re-usability, default form pre-filling and data inter-exchange among different databases.

As mentioned earlier, implementation of ESPD reduces the data errors and brings overall efficiency in the Public Procurement System.